Thursday, August 11, 2011

Here is our second part on "How to create a Google Chrome extension". Last time we made a basic "hello world" chrome extension. This time we will be going to the innards of a real world Google Chrome extension to see how things will work in real time.

Look for Developer mode option present in the right top corner. Click it if the Developer mode has a + by it, to add developer information to the page. The + changes to a -, and more buttons and information appear along with the existing extensions list.

Now scroll down to the extension that you just installed. Did you find something called "ID: " comprising 32 letters in it?

Cool, Didn't it remind you of something ? Yeah, these are none other than the folder names you saw in the Extensions directory.

Now, enter into the directory containing the ID that "Google Wave chat" extension had to find it's source.

It's time to explore with the files you see. Can you find manifest.json , options.html and popup.html ? These files are responsible for this extension to function. You will get to know more when you clone an extension and modify changes to see how it works by Loading your unpacked extension as mentioned in (Part 1)

Let me leave the coding part to you. I suggest you to read the official documentation before you work on any apps. There are few other things that you might want to know on how you have to extend your application.